Sunday, April 6, 2008

SACRAMENTO BEE PRAISES "YOGI"

Curveballs and high counts: Baseball's latest notorious era is reflected in this year's lineup of books
Bruce Dancis Apr 06, 2008 (The Sacramento Bee - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --

Baseball's steroids scandal and the publication of former Sen. George Mitchell's report on the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs affects how we fans look at our national pastime. It also affects how we look at some of this season's baseball books in our 18th annual guide....

Among the new biographies of great ballplayers from the past, consider: Charles C. Alexander's "Spoke: A Biography of Tris Speaker" (Southern Methodist University Press, $25.95, 360 pages), on the great center fielder whose 22-year career (mostly with the Red Sox and Cleveland Indians) led him to be among the first inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Carlo DeVito's "Yogi: The Life & Times of an American Original" (Triumph, $25.95, 400 pages), a useful reminder that the Yankees' Yogi Berra not only provided baseball with some its greatest quotes and malapropisms but was one of the greatest catchers of all time.